BUFFALO, N.Y. — After a heart attack, cardiac stem cell
therapy stimulates the growth of new heart cells, but exactly how
that happens is unclear. The National Institutes of Health has
awarded a $2 million grant to a researcher at the University at
Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences to do a
preclinical study to find out. The answer will help determine which
type of cardiac stem cell therapy will be most effective in
treating patients with heart failure.

Heart failure occurs when the heart cannot pump enough blood and
oxygen to support the body’s organs. According to the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, it affects more than 5 million
people in the U.S., with half of them dying within five years of
diagnosis.

“We’re trying to find out whether one of the cell
types — either cardiosphere-derived cells (CDCs), which come
from donors, or cardiac stem cells (CSCs) from the patient —
are more effective when infused into the coronary arteries,”
says John M. Canty Jr., MD, Albert and Elizabeth Rekate Professor,
chief of cardiology in the UB Department of Medicine and a
cardiologist with UBMD.

CSCs reside in the heart, Canty explains, and some researchers
hypothesize that they are the source of new cardiac muscle cells.
They normally divide slowly, but when selectively harvested from a
patient, they can be increased in number and then infused back into
the recipient’s heart. “After injection, the new
cardiac stem cells proliferate and are the source of new heart
muscle cells,” says Canty. “With this approach, only
cells from the same patient can be used.”

Another approach is to take tissue from heart biopsies, which
can grow into multicellular CDCs. Even though they do not develop
into new muscle cells themselves, these cells can improve cardiac
function. Canty and his colleagues previously demonstrated that
these CDCs, as well as mesenchymal stem cells isolated from bone
marrow, stimulate the recipient’s own heart muscle cells to
divide again. Canty notes this approach makes it potentially
feasible to use stem cells from an unrelated donor and not the
patient.

“Using cardiac stem cells that don’t need to be
harvested from the recipient would make this type of therapy more
widely available to the increasing number of patients in need of
treatments for heart failure,” says Canty.
“Demonstrating the feasibility of using cells from an
unrelated donor would also provide an off-the-shelf approach to
cardiac stem cell therapy.”

He adds that infusing stem cell formulations directly into
coronary arteries delivers the cells throughout the entire heart.
This method is much simpler than injecting cells directly into
heart muscle, which requires equipment that’s not widely
available.

If it turns out that harvesting a patient’s own cells is
more beneficial, then one approach could be to remove them with a
minimally invasive heart biopsy, boost their numbers by culturing
them outside of the body and then return them to the patient. While
conceding that this method is time-consuming, Canty and his
colleagues already have done this in preclinical studies. The
method also is being used in clinical trials of other types of
therapies.

Canty’s colleagues on the grant are Gen Suzuki, MD, PhD,
associate professor in the Department of Medicine; Munawwar Sajjad,
PhD, research associate professor in the Department of Nuclear
Medicine; and Brian Weil, PhD, postdoctoral research fellow in the
Department of Medicine.

Founded in 1846, the University at Buffalo School of Medicine
and Biomedical Sciences is beginning a new chapter in its history
with the largest medical education building under construction in
the nation. The eight-story, 628,000-square-foot facility is
scheduled to open in 2017. The new location puts superior medical
education, clinical care and pioneering research in close
proximity, anchoring Buffalo’s evolving comprehensive
academic health center in a vibrant downtown setting. These
new facilities will better enable the school to advance health and
wellness across the life span for the people of New York and the
world through research, clinical care and the education of
tomorrow’s leaders in health care and biomedical sciences.
The school’s faculty and residents provide care for the
community’s diverse populations through strong clinical
partnerships and the school’s practice plan, UBMD.